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Thursday, April 20, 2017

Spain's Child Poverty

Child
poverty is on the rise in wealthy countries as a result of the 2008
economic crisis and years of austerity, according to the United
Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF).
No
European country increased its spending on families, while two thirds
even cut per capita spending.

Spain
has the EU’s third highest rate of child poverty, after Romania and
Greece.

Statistics
show the proportion of children living below the poverty line in
Spain increased by nine percentage points between 2008 and 2014, to
reach almost 40 percent.

The
sharpest increase (56 percent) was among households of four people
(two adults and two children) living on less than €700 per month
(or €8,400 per year).

Spain
has been hit hard by the global economic crisis with one of the
highest unemployment rates in Europe, and that has trickled down to
impacting the well-being of its youngest citizens.

The
government cut child spending by 15 percent in 2010, which negatively
impacted the quality of education and access to educational
resources.

“Social
protection policies are very fragmented and very unequal, with little
focus on children,”said
UNICEF,
criticizing Madrid for its failure to contain child poverty. Since
2014 the fund has been calling for the Spanish government to make a
pact to fight against childhood poverty, establishing a “much
more generous” allocation
for each child.